The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The Special Bench concluded hearings in the civil and commercial cases involving Phajo Nidup on 20 May 2024, Monday, and pronounced a total of 87 judgements.
The civil cases involve credit and liabilities owed by Phajo Nidup to multiple parties whereas the commercial cases involve his loan debts to various financial institutions.
As per the judgments rendered by the Bench since its establishment, Phajo Nidup owes a sum of Nu.342.186 million (mn) to different private individuals excluding the liabilities of previous judgments pending before the Bench for enforcement.
Likewise, different private individuals owe about a sum of Nu.37.234 mn to Phajo Nidup.
Phajo is liable to pay the principal and interest payment to Nu. 657.759 to various banks.
However, interest and penalty amounting to Nu. 129.154 mn is imposed on various banks. For the purpose of recovery as well as to fix accountability, the interest and late fees were divided among bank employees who were involved in sanctioning the loan against the set procedure of the institution including banks as an institution for failing to oversee such incidents and few employees of other relevant agencies.
The loans from various financial institutions were applied for and sanctioned between 2013 and 2019.
Except for Phajo Nidup, others were accorded a reasonable time to pay to the banks. Since Phajo Nidup has no other credible sources of income, the Bench has instructed the banks to auction his mortgaged properties based on present market value during the enforcement after exhausting an appeal period of 10 days.
The priorities and entitlement of mortgage lands that were mortgaged twice or thrice with multiple banks were decided based on the order in which the mortgages were registered with relevant offices such as Thromde offices, Dungkhags, and Dzongkhags.
The Judiciary will also proceed with the judicial sale of his properties without any encumbrances to cover his liabilities after exhausting an appeal period of 10 days as appealed by Phajo Nidup himself.
He has a total of 25 Thrams registered in his name (individual and joint) and 35 Thrams registered in the name of other individuals – properties that were already purchased by Phajo Nidup. The present market value of these properties will be calculated during the enforcement of judgments.
The Bench was established through an executive order from the Supreme Court on 5 September 2022 to hear and decide cases involving Phajo Nidup. Within a period of over one and half years, the Bench heard 104 cases out of which 17 were criminal and 29 commercial cases involving financial institutions; and the rest were civil cases involving other private parties.
